I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging on here lately. (Or on my fansite that much either.) I’ve had a lot going on in my personal life since mid-December. (Or as I call it, putting out several fires of various sizes.) I may go into more details on some of this later in another blog, but in summary…

Problems with my husband’s job going from temporary/contract to permanent. It finally happened, but not before we got to T minus 2 weeks before his contract expired. Long story short, they last minute extended the contract, then finally hired him.

I got sick two times in a row. First was a sinus/ear infection. I was barely starting to recover when I got a full blown head cold that was going around work. This left me completely exhausted. Moral of the story: People need to cover their damn cough!

One of our cats became violently ill. First, he had kidney failure. He recovered fully, but then was diagnosed diabetic. We think we have that under control now.

Sinus/nose became inflamed. Sighs. I had a skin test (OW!) and I didn’t react to really anything. So it was just from the huge level of pollen in the air.

My husband became ill. He’s fine now and doing a better job of taking care of himself.

A major water main that supplies water for the county where I work broke really early one weekday morning. For that first day, toilets couldn’t flush and sinks reduced to a trickle. Also, boil water advisory for a few days.

My dentist’s office called to say my dental insurance was apparently waiting for me to contact them and say who I had secondary dental insurance through. They wouldn’t start the process of my claim for my crown before then. Insurance didn’t even attempt to call and ask me. I found out this way. Ugh.

Daylight Saving Time. My body clock is pretty precise. It does not like going to bed an hour earlier. Not to mention the sun being out close to bedtime also screws me up. Lots of tossing and turning for days. The Monday after the time change I was so tired it was painful.

I’m taking my car in this week to get an oil change and to take another look at how much of my front brakes are left. I don’t hear any noises yet, but they’ve been in the ‘caution’ area for a while. I’ll see if they are finally at the point of replacing.

And all that is just what I can recall at this moment.

Head-desk.

So yeah some of these things were more annoyances and frustrations. However, when you add it in with everything else I’ve been dealing with, it becomes a compounding issue.

I could use a boring, regular, drama and issue free life for a long while now.

The previous two months I separated my weeks after Sunday. Mostly because for planning I think in terms of my work week. My work week begins on Monday and runs through Friday. Then I have the weekend for whatever. This time I did the standard (US) calendar week. I messed up writing the year a little bit. I didn’t quite pick up my pen when I was writing. But hey no need to be perfect for something just for me.

I barely had room for important days on the bottom. However, I wanted to make sure I had enough room for my washi tape at the top of the page. If you like this washi tape, I got it fromSusieBsupplies on Etsy.

So for a while I’ve been wanting to post my progress with my bullet journal.

Things that have not worked for me:

Weekly layout – I knew from the start that this layout would not work for me. I didn’t even attempt to create one at any point. My Monday – Friday schedule is consistent and I don’t have enough going on each week to have to record it. Maybe that sounds like a boring life to some, but eh. I work the same hours Monday through Friday and between getting ready for work until I get home, I use 12 hours out of my day. That doesn’t give me much time to schedule things to do with the rest of my day. To be honest, by the time I get home I’m exhausted. It’s a combination of both how really early I get up, and the fact that my job requires extreme attention to detail.

Habit tracking – This didn’t work at all. I’ve switched to using an app to track things like this instead. Mostly I needed to be reminded to track my habits. Having to remember to open my bullet journal every day, then open to my habit tracking page to remind me just didn’t work. (I use Loop – Habit Tracker for those wondering. Android OS.)

Mood tracking – Yeah this died out quickly. For one, moods can change during the day. Two for the same reason the habit tracker didn’t work. (I use Daylio.)

Printing out monthly layouts and taping or gluing them onto a page of the journal – Over time I noticed the pages of the journal started to bulge. That doesn’t bode well for just starting out a journal. Over time the binding would weaken from the extra weight of it all.

So above is an image of the covers of all the books I read in 2017, minus American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

The Best:

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson – This graphic novel is as great as I’ve been hearing. I’m glad I finally had a chance to read it. Highly recommend.

Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab- Second book in a rare duology. It’s just as good as the first. Partially a dystopia, partially paranormal. If this sort of thing interests you, check it out.

Up From the Sea by Leza Lowitz – I loved the prose this book was written in. I want to find more books with plots written this way. The book is about the March 2011 tsunami that hit Japan.

The Okay or Meh:

The Tournament at Gorlan by John Flanagan – I love the world of Ranger’s Apprentice. I love Halt. I had high hopes for this prequel and it fell short for me. Halt already seemed pretty accomplished and I wanted to see him grow. Repetition of the clothing color used by Morgarath’s soldiers. Seriously I started wondering why the characters were repeating it over and over as if they forgot along the way. It’s a bit too much.

Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith – Predictable on how things were going to go plot-wise. Sighs.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray – I wanted a good book about Princess Leia. This was not it. Since it’s about her as a senator there are tons of political things going on with the plot. Eh.

The Bottom:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman – This was my second attempt at reading this book. Once again I just could not finish it. I did get farther than last time, but it just became too boring for me. Once as Shadow is away from the gods, the plot just dragged for me. This book just wasn’t for me. I may try one of his other books sometime, but this is now a permanent did not finish. I will not be picking up this book again.

Obviously, there’s a lot of interesting things about the other books I read, but those are the highlights.